Daring to publish my meditation...
November 1, 2015
The sky is a beautiful pink today, settling into a golden white at the edge of the horizon. It glows light rose, a color I name “shine,” because it flashes and makes me squint. A bird squawks, “who are you, who are you, who are you?,” then finishes his question with what sounds like, “huh? huh? huh?” Another bird chirtles, a sound between chortle and chirp, begging, “come here, come here,” and then “Be here, be here, be here.”
Yesterday, I tried to document a valley girl accent on an endless loop of HGTV while I cut hundreds of water bottles. Here are the notes I scribbled on the back of an envelope:
1.'All white' = 'ohl-white'
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'really' = 'rilly' (as in silly)
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Everything with ing becomes 'een' (as in 'amazeen'or everytheen) and my favorite,
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'What's going on' = 'cuh-n hawn'.
I tried and failed to jot down the rapid rhythm of her swallowed phrasing . This sounds condescending, so let me admit that I misuse and embarass myself when I invent words without realizing it. I am known to lapse into a Boston accent, especially at restaurants when I am “aw-der-in my din-nah.” I just enjoy deciphereen people and bird chirtles. “Be here, be here, be here,” is all I can hear right now.
“If you could you could do anything and knew you wouldn't fail, what would you do?” It's and old prompt, but I read it again in Jenny Lawson's Furiously Happy. Jenny approaches the question as though she has a three wish genie. My instinct is to worry about choosing the wrong wish. Write a book or sing in a blue grass band? Does the prompt imply any measure of reasonableness? Maybe we should put our poker chips on the outlandish. Why is the prompt in the negative instead of the affirmative, “if you knew you would succeed?” I suspect we fear failure more than we are lured by the prospect of success.
Last night my dream was like watching a weird steampunk movie. I woke up, grabbed my smartphone and wrote down the scenes on a million virtual post-it notes since I don't know how to pull up the notebook app. My phone is smarter than me, I mean “I.” (Does the . go before or after the “”? I'll have to ask my phone.) My dream recollections came in out of sequence spurts, perfect for the post-it format. Regarding writing about dreams, most writers warn against it, but there are a handful whose dreams fuel their fiction. My dream is creepily Jungian so I will keep it to myself What goes on in my waking brain is more than enough material to deal with.
Right now, my new color named Shine is glowing a wedge onto white curtains. It moves from lavender to pink to yellow and back very subtly. The shadow of a palm tree creates a horizon line behind a scrim. The sky peeks through the trees. I see no middle ground in the transition from solid to vapor. Where land meets sky there is dancing and contentment for me. The land and the clouds don't merge, they just look very, very happy to be near each other. They touch only in places where the taller bits of branch reach the highest.
A squirrel plays high wire on the phone lines. All the underground cabling must hamper some of his travels. Does anything travel along the buried cables other than voices and electricity? What do I do with all of my thoughts? I can't differentiate interesting from boring. I wrestle with all manner of differentiation in life. What is to be feared and what is safe? My default often falls to fear. It seems easier to bow to fear than take the risk of being hurt or failing. But in my fear I fail.
My first real job was as an insurance underwriter, the person who puts a price tag on risk. I was swimming in the unknown and unknowable. How much do you charge for a truckload of watermelons traveling from Florida to Georgia? I had never contemplated what could happen to watermelons. The liability side of insurance was more my cup of tea, though I wasn't good at that either. I learned about slipping and falling, and who can be blamed. That poisoned my thinking more than the watermelons because people were at stake, children, even my children.
Today I read Hebrews 4:1
“Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.”
Since I embrace everyday living as part of my eternity, here's to stepping into rest and living this day without fear.